Jeffrey D. Sadow is an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University Shreveport. If you're an elected official, political operative or anyone else upset at his views, don't go bothering LSUS or LSU System officials about that because these are his own views solely.
This publishes five days weekly with the exception of 7 holidays. Also check out his Louisiana Legislature Log especially during legislative sessions (in "Louisiana Politics Blog Roll" below).

Search This Blog

6.6.13

While the parameters will become clear by the end of the day, the
apparent compromise product for Louisiana’s operating budget represents a small
defeat for conservatives in concessions on extra spending that perhaps did not
have to be made and in the potential for bigger government down the road.

As previously
noted, the conservative Republican faction that controlled the Senate,
about a third of the House of Representatives, and had the backing of Gov. Bobby
Jindal, largely could have dictated terms with the assistance of the
non-conservative wing of the party (with a couple of other non-party members) in
the House, the so-called “budget hawks” who comprised about another third,
cutting Democrats out of the deal. Being that as a whole Republicans had a
majority, that should have been the natural outcome, and it largely was.

The “hawks” came on board because the use of “one-time” money – a term
that includes surplus recurring revenues dedicated for one purpose but which
are used for another and nonrecurring monies from one-off transactions such as
property sales – was limited and two bills, HB 437 and HB 620, were promised to
be passed in addition to the budget in HB
1. They actually didn’t have much leverage over the former because the
amount of that money fell under the total specified in the House rule that
would have required a two-thirds vote. But there was trading going on with the
legislation, because of the majority needed not just to pass a budget, but also
because of the constitutional
two-thirds vote requirement to take it up (and the other two bills) with
less than three days to go in the session.

5.6.13

Perhaps on the brink of getting glorious something for absolutely nothing,
if Republican legislators are smart Democrats may find they got themselves to pull
defeat from the jaws of victory on the issue of Louisiana’s budget.

Yesterday, unanimously the House
rejected Senate changes to the operating expense budget HB
1. These included adding back in from previous House receipt of the bill some
“one-time” money, or a mix of recurring revenues that do not initially go to
the general fund and nonrecurring monies from things like asset sales, spending
more on higher education and on a educator salary bonus, and reducing cuts to
government contracting and other ancillary services that otherwise might not be
implementable.

This probably mostly pleased one of the three House factions,
conservative Republicans, despite their misgivings over the increased size of
government that resulted. That change they likely countenanced to satisfy
Democrats, the chamber’s minority but made relevant in the debate because other
Republicans, termed “fiscal hawks,” had broken with the leadership and
initially proposed
a combination of tax increases and cuts, reductions in the least valuable tax
credits, and a semi-gimmick tax amnesty in order to wipe out any use of
one-time money. Although each group represents about a third of the chamber,
the “hawks” had leverage because of the House rule that forces the use
of any one-time money past a certain growth factor, which produced a figure of
$188 million this year, to be approved by a two-thirds vote.

4.6.13

The failure of state Sen. Conrad
Appel’s SB
117 to become law invites another look into how financing of higher
education in Louisiana occurs, the facts and myths surrounding it, and
therefore how to proceed to reduce the inefficiency of the system while
improving outcomes.

His bill would have created a commission to assign performance
standards for schools, which subsequently would have been used to apportion
state money to them on the basis of outcomes. In testimony, Appel said while
the state lagged in support per student compared to southern state peers, the
more important issue was performance and getting greater efficiency gains.
Critics, and perhaps explaining why the measure failed, argued it was a lack of
money in the system where its increase might get better performance.

However, the data largely validate the idea that higher education in
Louisiana can be run more efficiently and does not suffer that much from lack
of resources. Using the latest data
available (2010), the state (of all of them plus the District of Columbia)
ranks 18th highest in per
capita state appropriations, yet ranks close to the bottom both in degree
completion (defined as those finished within six years) and in retention. But
in total expenditures per capita,
Louisiana is right in the middle, and ranked 32nd in amount of
spending per full-time equivalent student.

3.6.13

If you’re Gov. Bobby
Jindal and his legislative budgetary allies, you call the bluff.

In the annual exercise of poker being played with real money called the
state’s budget, the three-player environment that has surfaced in the Louisiana
House of Representatives this year includes Jindal and conservatives who almost
exclusively are Republicans, a faction of Republicans and a few others who term
themselves “fiscal hawks” who have supported creating a slightly smaller budget
of a mixture of tax increases, spending cuts, tax credit reductions, bonus
funds in the form of a tax amnesty, and changes to the budget process connected
to this year’s product, and Democrats who want higher spending and taxes. The
Jindal crew has picked up an important ally in the Senate Republican majority,
giving them a firm grip on two of the three legs comprising the lawmaking
tripod.

This weekend, the HB 1 version (older one here)
that came back from the Senate challenged
the strange bedfellow alliance of the “hawks” and Democrats, in different
ways. For the former, it pumped in “one-time money,” a mixture of money that
includes nonrecurring revenues from things like property sales and recurring
dollars that do not originate from the general fund, and decoupled the several
tepid and one obnoxious reforms of them from passing as part of this
upcoming year’s budget. For the latter, it included items liberals had
complained about lack of inclusion such as a public elementary and secondary
educators pay raise although in a one-off form, more money to higher education,
the small tax increase on merchants, and generally bigger government. For the
former, it contests their public oaths about the budget and images as reformers
they have tried to carve, while for the latter it entices them to come aboard
by giving them stuff they publicly have stated they support.

2.6.13

Somewhat predictably, the Louisiana Senate threw
back to the House of Representatives an operating budget designed to
bludgeon the political clout of both the minority party Democrats and a faction
of the majority party Republicans by making offers that can’t be refused nor
can be resisted. Meanwhile, the fiscal system that produces this chaos remains the
same and grows government.

The version
of HB
1 that came from the House represented a significant departure from the
version initially introduced by Gov. Bobby
Jindal. Most dramatically, it removed large swaths of some kinds of “one-time
money,” such as transfers of surplus money from dedicated funds and borrowing
from dedicated funds of state-authorized entities, and replaced it with another
kind, a tax amnesty program. It also made some minor across-the-board spending
cuts, eliminated a small amount of wasteful tax credits, and hiked taxes somewhat
on retailers by eliminating the state provision to pay for them acting as sales
tax collectors for the state in a timely fashion.

About Me

Subscribe To

Comment publishing requirements

You must be a registered user with an OpenID-compliant service to leave comments, which will be moderated. Any comments that do not address issues in the post for which they are intended will not be posted; neither will those that utterly lack intellectual coherence.